The global village and the end of individual relevance

Here's a thought, the connectivity of the world today, the level of cooperation is making individuals less relevant; and thats a good thing!

It used to be that if you were looking for brilliant ideas, you had to find brilliant people. Today, the internet is extending what started with the invention of writing and its proliferation with the printing press. Thanks to today's connected world, ideas have become even more disembodied. On the internet we look at and share the brilliant things we find but we care less and less for the creators. Many times we come across a piece of beautiful design and creativity online and share it. However, we are less and less concerned with remembering or even noticing who the brilliant mind behind it is. This could be at least in part due to the sheer number of brilliant things we can see online. The downside of this of course is that it now takes more than ever before for individual brilliance to be widely recognised, and the good thing is it now takes more than ever for individual brilliance to be recognised!

Identifying a good idea is not always easy, but it is almost always easier to identify a good idea  than it is to come up with one. With the  rise in global connectivity, we are less and less impressed by the ideas and brilliance in our own neighbourhood because now we have access to what is brilliant on a global scale. Compared to that, most of what we see near us with pales in comparison. The brilliant people next to us start looking a little less special on the grand scale of things.

With knowledge so universally accessible, knowledgeable people are not as relevant anymore. Between wikipedia and google alone we have access to the minds of millions if not billions of individuals. With the vast information available online, brilliant individuals have less relevance. After all, there are millions of other brilliant individuals and ideas online. With the reduced scarcity, the reliance on individuals for thought leadership and ideas diminishes as even the most brilliant minds now have peers. Even when they don't, connectivity enables groups of minds capable of challenging whatever any one mind can come up with.

Sure it makes getting recognised for your efforts harder, but it also makes us have to work harder to stay relevant. It takes more for brilliance to stand out than ever before. Much is asked of us, and we ask more from those whom we would celebrate as our heroes. Through those who rise to the challenge, humanity gets better, and the era in which nations and communities depended on single individuals for ideas draws ever closer to an end.